Game Design: Player Powers in Go Fish

So, I had this idea that each suit should support two player powers. Eight player powers, four suits … I thought it would work out nicely. Yesterday afternoon, I started to wonder why I stopped with eight player powers, and if there was more I could do, perhaps. It started when I described how some of the player powers worked, and compared my game to Go Fish.

Based on what I recall of Go Fish, you really only have two player powers. One, you may ask target opponent if they have a card of a certain value. If they do, they must surrender any cards with the requested value to you. If they don’t have any cards of the requested value, you instead draw a card from the deck. “Go Fish.”

Your second power, which is almost passive or reactionary, is to play four of a kind (or two, depending on what version of the game you’re playing) for points. These cards go to a sort of “victory area” where they’re counted toward your final score. It can be more difficult to remember who has what cards the farther you get into the game, when you have to collect four-of-a-kind. But there you have it.

Depending on how you play, it may also be possible to ask for cards of a value that you don’t currently have in your hand, as a form of bluffing. You still must surrender any cards you have in your hand of the requested value, but it broadens the overall complexity of the game quite a bit, and introduces a new level of strategy.

I like the powers I’ve developed so far, and I like how the game reads. Obviously, I’m still waiting to see how it plays in its current form, but I can continue to speculate until I have a chance to playtest. Still, I wonder if there’s more I could add in terms of player powers. What about that Reinforcement power I came up with?

Well, it occurred to me that if I’m going to assign player powers to the suits to support, there are inevitably some powers that I’ll want to have supported by all the suits. The concept behind Reinforcement is one of those powers. “Attaching” cards to reserved cards is a power I want to be shared around all of the suits, so it makes sense not to necessarily put the power in the “core” rules.